IRS Seizes War Tax Resisters’ Home

Nuclear Protester May Lose Home Over Tax Stand

Colrain, Mass., April 11—
Three years before he founded the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign in
St. Louis in
1980, Randy Kehler started protesting the
Goverment’s military budget by not paying his Federal income taxes.

Last month the Internal Revenue Service
seized Mr. Kehler’s modest house, tucked in a valley among apple orchards and
farms, and told him it would be sold unless he paid $20,000 in back taxes
plus $7,000 in interest.

Mr. Kehler, a lobbyist, and his wife, Betsy Corner, say they will neither pay
money to the Government nor move out of their house if they are ordered to be
evicted. They have urged members of their community not to bid on their
house. So far, nobody has.

A spokesman for the revenue service, Frank Keith, said it had not kept
statistics on tax protesters since 1985, when
there were 21,300. Tax resistance groups estimate that
this year, 10,000 to 20,000 Americans will not
pay income taxes or will pay less than what they owe to protest military
spending.

Tax Money to Charities

Mr. Kehler and Ms. Corner pay state and local taxes each year. They figure
out how much they owe the Federal Government and send a Form 1040 to the
I.R.S.,
but the money involved is sent to charities.

“I spent years trying to stop nuclear weapons through legal channels, through
legislation and education, but not one single production line has been shut
down,” said Mr. Kehler, adding that he was more than willing to sacrifice his
home for the sake of his conscience.

The
I.R.S.,
imposes stiff criminal and civil penalties against people and organizations
that do not file tax returns or do not pay in full. People who do not pay for
reasons of conscience are treated no differently from other evaders. The
deadline for filing a Federal income tax return this year is
midnight Monday.

The Tax Resistance Movement

Tax resistance organizations say their numbers have been rising gradually,
especially among people who choose to deduct a token amount from what they
legally owe. Some boycott the Federal excise tax on telephone service, the
revenue of which has been used to help finance the military.

Like Mr. Kehler and Ms. Corner, many other tax resisters shape their lives
around a decision not to pay taxes. They remain self-employed; employers
could withhold the hated taxes from their pay. Most do not have bank accounts
or other assets that could be seized. Some deliberately keep their income
below taxable levels: $4,950 for a single person, $8,900 for a married couple
under the age of 65.

Last week, a Federal district judge in Philadelphia heard arguments in a suit
filed by the Internal Revenue Service against a Quaker church that the
Government has charged with refusing to withhold over $11,000 in taxes from
employees who object to paying them.

How Some Penalties Worked Out

Prosecution of tax resisters does not appear uniform. Bob Bady, a next-door
neighbor of Mr. Kehler and Ms. Corner, said he had not filed a return since
1970 and had not been penalized. Rabbi Michael
A. Robinson of Temple Israel in Croton,
N.Y., began paying only
70 percent of his taxes to protest the Vietnam War, and the revenue service
seized his bank account and began a six-year audit that ended in
1988. “In the end, they got more money than they
would if I had paid my tax, because of the interest on it,” he said.

Americans have been protesting the use of tax money for military purposes
since before the Federal income tax was created in
1913 by the 16th
Amendment. Thoreau refused to pay taxes levied for the Mexican War of
1846–48 and encouraged other citizens to
do the same. He spent a night in jail.

The story of how Kehler & Corner lost and then regained their house, and
how a community of supporters used the seizure as an educational opportunity,
is told in the film An Act of Conscience.
Bob Bady is still resisting taxes, now from Vermont.

Michael Robinson had the honor of having been arrested alongside Martin Luther
King in 1963. His home was a way station for
conscientious objectors fleeing for Canada during the Vietnam War. He moved to
California in 1989 and was active in the peace
movement there; he died in 2006.

Quakers will not pay taxes

Philadelphia (UPI) —
Philadelphia Quakers say it is not unreasonable for them to follow their
beliefs and refuse to withhold federal taxes from employees who are
conscientious objectors to war taxes, the head of the local church said
Monday.

Samuel Caldwell, general secretary of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the
Religious Society of Friends, said that was their central argument when they
appeared in federal court Monday to answer an Internal Revenue Service suit.

The suit, filed in August 1988, is seeking
payment of $11,224 in taxes from the employees, plus $5,614 in penalty from
the Quakers.

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